Gerry Adams steps off the stage (but he won’t be far away)

( CNN) Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams has carefully choreographed his retirement this coming weekend from the party’s more powerful pole, but it’s unlikely that we’ve envisioned the last of him.

For his countless commentators, Adams is the utterly unacceptable appearance of Irish Republicanism. In their belief, “hes having” blood on his hands — an declaration he’s scorned. Adams has repeatedly denied he was a member of the Irish Republican Army, a fighter organization that in 1999 admitted to killing people during the course of its 30 years of sectarian bloodletting in Northern Ireland known as “the Troubles.”

The conflict — which saw more than 3,600 people killed — opposed Catholic republicans against Protestant unionists. The former wanted to unite Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland, while the unionists wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom.